


Fallout

by burymeinziam



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Liam-centric, M/M, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-28
Updated: 2013-09-28
Packaged: 2017-12-27 20:02:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/983025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burymeinziam/pseuds/burymeinziam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>it all ends somewhere; even when it doesn't</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fallout

Time ticks by and the setting is them; two people on a bed lying side by side, one back facing another and Liam is glad he can’t see him. It’s uncomfortable, Liam will admit that much, but it’s less painful than seeing the gentle curve of Zayn’s back, the smooth tanned skin decorated with harsh red marks caused by blunt fingernails scraping over sensitive flesh. Liam’s eyelids feel thin and heavy and the sun is coming up and just starting to peek through the dirty, filmy curtains of his apartment. That Frank Ocean song Zayn loves to sing (the one Liam used to love for that very reason but now makes his stomach turn in the same way) pops into Liam’s head and annoys him to full wakefulness and he begins to remember that this is home and this is empty.

Liam wishes he loved Zayn, or maybe he doesn’t – or perhaps he still does (it’s hard to be sure); but he’s thinking about something different and more painfully raw. He’s thinking public bathroom raw and nitty-gritty teeth on teeth action. The dirty kind of love that makes them hate each other and makes skin feel like nothing more than plastic wrapping up bones and meat. Raw like they want nothing more than to be in each other’s skin just for the sake of whenever or wherever or however.

Crazy for each other.

Dancing into crowds with sweat pouring down their tired, fucking awful faces.

“What time is it?” Zayn mumbles into his pillow, voice ragged from sleep.

Liam is glad that he doesn’t have to bother with turning over since he’d moved his alarm clock to the opposite side of the bed so he wouldn’t have to see Zayn’s face first thing in the morning.

“9:23,” Liam answers. “And you’re almost late.” His voice sounds almost as hollow as his chest. Liam can hardly remember the last time he hadn’t felt so empty because Zayn has been gone for so long, the notion of not feeling as though there’s a giant void where a heart should be seems completely foreign.

Zayn makes a hissing sound, followed by a half-hearted curse under his breath. Liam wonders, almost hopes for a kiss good morning or maybe even for Zayn to roll over in bed and look, really fucking look, at Liam with golden brown eyes that are filled with something other than apathy for once.

“I’m going to shower,” are Zayn’s parting words to Liam, or maybe to his pillow.

He gets up as silently and swiftly as he’d come in the night before and Liam stomach folds in on itself. He doesn’t know why he’d been hoping for anything more than that. The thought of Zayn’s lips on his had seemed nice, but Liam knows that the minute it happens without a pretense of alcohol or the mind numbing urge of an impending orgasm it’s going to feel as though he’s being burned.

That’s just the way things are. He and Zayn are in this constant dance caught between love and hate and lust. Liam looks at Zayn and longs for what was; for a time when they were so much more than empty gazes and half-hearted hellos. Liam longs for a body that used to bring his own to life, for fingers that would leave goose bumps in their wake as they danced across his skin. For lips and eyes that were a constant reminder of what it was to love and be loved in return. Liam looks at Zayn and sees the shell of a boy he once knew and now feels an irrational hate for. He looks at Zayn and feels sick to his stomach for reasons Liam has a hard time wrapping his mind around let alone putting into words. Liam looks at Zayn and feels abandoned and betrayed.

Liam looks at Zayn and he doesn’t even know.

The bathroom door shuts and Liam closes his eyes and imagines Zayn naked and touching himself under the warm spray of the water. Liam feels sick with how much he wants Zayn; he feels dirty. He thinks about the way Zayn used to make him go, make him feel, make him do. Zayn used to sing those stupid top 40 hits and songs from Liam’s favorite Disney movies and Liam would listen while he sat on the toilet tapping his feet against the tiled flooring adding in a few bars here and there. Now, he sits on the edge of the bed and hopes Zayn will invite him back into the life he’s worked so hard to shut Liam out of.

Liam isn’t sure what happened. He knows they were fighting more often than not and maybe Liam hadn’t been patient enough because Zayn wasn’t quite ready enough to come out. It’s just that Liam was so tired of hiding. He wanted to feel normal; to be able to go out with his boyfriend and hold his hand without having to worry about what other people could see or what they would think.

And Zayn wanted that too, but there were things, parts of his life that Liam knew about but didn’t quite understand, that were keeping him from being able to do that. At least right now. Zayn’s family wasn’t nearly as accepting as Liam’s and he was already getting bashed in the media for things that were out of his control, things like race and religion, and Zayn didn’t want to add homosexuality into the mix as well.

Maybe Liam was being a little selfish and perhaps he should have been more sympathetic to Zayn’s situation but he couldn’t help but to feel as though Zayn didn’t think Liam was worth the backlash; like Zayn would rather keep him stashed away in the closet like a dirty secret that he couldn’t bear the thought of getting out. Maybe Liam was a little selfish in thinking that maybe Zayn just wanted to have his cake and eat it too, that he wanted to parade his tabloid engagement around town accepting phony congratulations while Liam sat at home watching it all happen on TV and on the internet instead of taking the time to consider that Zayn was hurting too; more so than he was even letting on.

Maybe they were both at fault because after it all ended it was as if Liam didn’t even exist. Zayn completely cut him off and acted as though Liam wasn’t worth more than the dirt under his shoe. And then there was that party at that fancy Hotel downtown and the open bar and Zayn leaning on Liam and saying how much he missed them and

_“Why didn’t things work out, Li? We were so fucking **good** ; why didn’t things work out for us?”_

And Zayn’s hand on his shoulder was electric and his breath ghosting over his neck was intoxicating and Liam felt drunk twice over, but it was on this boy more so than it was the alcohol.

 _“I don’t know, Zayn,”_  Liam had told him.  _“But we still can be. Just because it didn’t work the first time around doesn’t make it any less right.”_

And then there were hands and lips and feet tripping over feet as they stumbled out of the ballroom and into an empty stall in the men’s room. Liam didn’t even care that his tux cost him a little over a grand and it was being careless tossed onto the floor of a public bathroom. All he could think about was Zayn lips covering his skin and the way Zayn’s body was leaning so heavily against his own because he trusted Liam to keep him upright through it all. Liam didn’t care because Zayn was there and for the first time in a long time Liam felt as though he’d finally returned home.

When it was over though, it was over. Zayn went home with Perrie and Liam went home alone and it was if nothing had changed. Zayn was still angry and Liam was still worthless except for when Zayn was drunk and lonely and found himself stumbling into Liam’s apartment at three in the morning begging for a warm bed and an even warmer body. Liam always wanted to say no, wanted to turn Zayn away and tell him that it can’t be like this. But Liam would take one look at Zayn and he was right there and Liam missed him so much and Zayn was right fucking there.

Liam hated him. He loved him, but he hated him all the same.

Liam doesn’t know what happened. He does, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t know when love bled into hate bled into apathy and then when they all sort of colored each other in and became this emotion Liam doesn’t even know what to call, let alone do with. He doesn’t know why they do this or how to stop or what it all means.

Liam just knows that breakfast is optional because it’s hard for them to sit at a table in the morning making small talk before arguing over who has to wash the dishes. He just knows that optional means not going to happen, so he just waits for the sound of the shower before venturing into the kitchen where he feels a small surge of gratitude because Zayn had the decency to put on a pot of coffee.

But now Liam is alone and the clock in the living room is ticking the minutes of the hours of all the days he’s spent and is going to spend living and existing in this apartment. He won’t say that he hates it, the simply white and silvery laminated feel of the countertops, but he doesn’t love it either. He doesn’t love the clean and pristine blankness of it all.

“ _It helps me stay in line,”_ Zayn had said. _“It keeps me focused; helps my creative energy when it’s blank like this; like a canvas. I can color it all in.”_

Liam wishes he hadn’t listened to him and moved all of Zayn’s things into the guest bedroom and allowed him to mark up all the walls; a permanent reminder that Zayn was there and that he’d lived and breathed within these walls and that things had once been different and not so terribly and completely fucked up. Liam wishes he’d never done it because he hasn’t seen a damn speck of that creative energy since Zayn had crashed into his bedroom and turned that sneaky, spiny back to him.

Liam wishes he could make Zayn another graffiti room he could mark up and claim and be whatever he wanted to be if it would only bring him back. If it would bring them back together and make them the people they used to be before something snapped and everything changed.

The shit Liam would do.

The things he would give.

The clock is ticking and Liam can hear Zayn singing over the spray of the shower and Liam’s mind flashes backward to a time before when he’d felt so much more than empty. To distract himself, Liam pours himself a cup of coffee before leaning against the counter trying not to focus on the past and just how far away he feels from this life he’s chosen to keep.


End file.
